Change
by Omniwriter1234
Summary: Sometimes change is a part of life and sometimes people refuse to change.


Disclaimer: I do not own and/or claim to own any recognizable and/or licensed material appearing in this work of fiction in any way, shape, and/or form. I am not attempting to and/or making a profit from this work of fiction in any way, shape, and or form. All recognizable and/or licensed material appearing in this work of fiction belong to their respective owners in every way, shape, and/or form in accordance to the law.

AN: I have no idea what this is. Enjoy it.

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"I didn't want this ceremony…unsurprisingly Naruto made it happen in the end." Sasuke's voice held a rare lightness to it, a small smile on his face as he looked to his right, to where his new wife stood with him. "I'm glad I can call you Uchiha Sakura now."

The recently married couple shared a kiss to applause, the blonde Hokage one of the loudest as the couple sat down.

It was all a blur to the man then, all he knew was that he and Naruto had briefly embraced as he made his way up to give a speech for the happy couple, something about a conversation, an idea of telling a few embarrassing stories coming from the blonde, vaguely entering his mind before it was simply gone as he turned to look into loving emerald eyes.

What he did know was what overtook him, what made him act as he did moments ago.

"You're my best friend Naruto, never forget that."

"Come on Sasuke, we're like brothers." The two embraced as the Uchiha reached the podium with one arm each wrapping around the shoulder of the other.

"Tch, you're so annoying Baka."

"Right back at ya Teme."

The Hokage stepped back for him, letting him past but he didn't. His hand moved like a blur, a like a knife as he plunged it into Naruto's stomach, the blonde Hokage only able to look at him as the heavily Chakra laced strike dropped him to the ground even as the Uchiha calmly stepped over him.

"Naruto…" The Uchiha did not act as if he had just attacked the man he called his best friend only moments ago, leaving him collapsed on the ground as he sat down, crossing his legs, resting his chin in his single remaining hand. "Naruto, I'm sorry about this but it has to be done."

"Naruto…" Hinata crawled over to her husband, her tears freely falling as his blood stained clothes were revealed to her. "Naruto, please, get up!"

"I never intended for this to happen but your little speech…" His eyes closed as he took a deep breath, his eyes opening moments later, empty of everything but a cold fury and even it simply vanished in the blink of an eye. "I just realized how much I hated you before all this, how much you revolted me, how much I just wanted to beat your damn face in every time I saw you."

"Don't look at me like that." Sasuke's voice carried over the occupants of the room, his eyes briefly leaving Naruto's prone form to instead look at the reception's many guests, the hate, the angry, the confusion all of them felt nothing to him and his voice never changed from the dull tone he spoke in. "He's infuriating." He never made eye contact but it was enough to quell any resistance seeing the change in his eyes, not the activation of his Dojutsu, it would be a challenge but he could be beaten, it was the lack of anything, hate, madness, regret, in his eyes. Only cold acceptance of what he had just done, what he was doing, and, what was truly terrifying, what he had yet to do.

"Naruto…I can say with certainty that you are the worst man I've ever met but only because you think you're the best in the world. You're not. You've never been the best."

"And who is it then? You!" Hinata's eyes had changed her Byakugan activating from her emotions as she turned her pale eyes towards the Uchiha. "You're so damn amazing aren't you! You're the last Uchiha, right? People call you one of the greatest Shinobi to ever live, even the second coming of that madman Madara?"

"No, I'm none of those things Hyuga. Naruto will call himself that. He'll say he knows pain, knows suffering, and knows how to overcome it to every 'villain' he meets, he tells them how he escaped it, used his 'bonds', the great power of friendship, to overcome them, to show them the power of his Nindo. And then he'll say that stupid catchphrase of his at some point, scream it like a victory cry to whoever is unlucky enough to have had to fight him."

Sasuke had not changed his impromptu seating arrangement, unmoving as his eyes passed over the furious Hyuga, she would not act as she knew she stood no chance against the Uchiha. He had been part of battles she would never see the scale of again and had walked out alive of them all in the end. Only his last fight with Naruto, when he had tried to kill him, had left him with any lasting damage and it was voluntarily left as it was at that.

"Naruto…like I said before, I don't hate you now but your little speech left such a bitter taste in my mouth I had to act. I couldn't stand seeing you on that freakin' pedestal anymore."

The Uchiha glanced at his empty sleeve, looking back towards Naruto a moment later, seeing his bandaged hand before he began speaking again.

"We're not dissimilar though, we're both more alike than either of us really thought. We both do know what it's like to suffer, what it's like to be alone. But I know it better than you. For all your talk on knowing what my life was like, you didn't know my greatest burden, the thing that pained me most until I left. Betrayal. You spoke to me as if you knew what it was like to watch who you admired, who you loved with all your heart, destroy everything you knew. You act as if you knew what it was like to suffer through the massacre of my kin for days within my own mind. You act as if you truly knew Itachi like I knew him! You act as if he was your brother but he wasn't you damn bastard, he was mine!"

His dull calm tone had finally been lost, outrage and fury filling his voice instead as the pupils of his eyes twisted and warped, his Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, the combined power of two brothers that had loved each other more than anything else, glaring at Naruto's collapsed form.

"You speak as if you knew everything about him, everything that mattered to me, everything I lost when he turned his back on the village, on our clan! You act as if you're him but you're not Naruto, you're nothing when it comes to my brother but you still want to take his place, become something you know you can never be and the worst part of this, the absolute worst part of this all, is just how okay you've made…no, no, you forced everyone to be with this. No one here has or ever will speak out against you because it's worthless, no one is going to try and change your mind because you're the most stubborn man I've ever met!"

"But the killer about all of this, what makes you a living hell to be close to was that you've been like this even when you were a child."

"You screamed 'I'm going to be Hokage somday' or 'Believe it' every day, you wanted attention so you pulled pranks, got loud, you did everything someone shouldn't do and drew the eyes of everyone to you, forcing them to see you and forcing them to get used to you. No one liked you Naruto not only because of your status as the Jinchuriki but because you made yourself out to be a little demon with every prank you pulled. How can anyone accept a child like that? Yet you say that you did it all like a badge of pride, that you were such a great nuisance to the village that you became Hokage. You became Hokage in the end, one of the happiest days of your life, but you didn't learn a single thing to get there. You never changed."

"Look at the two of us Naruto, we could be the two sides of a coin, different on the outside but similar on the inside but now, now I'm nothing like you because I had to grow up. I lost everything more times than I care to count because I tried to be some unstoppable force while you gained everything in the damn world doing the same! We both had goals Naruto, we both had dreams we wanted to accomplish, promises we swore to ourselves to keep but I never succeeded while you did."

"I killed the brother I used to love, the brother who still loved me enough to kill hundreds and then turn my love into hate, a hatred for everything about him so I could one day kill him. I fought him at last, after years of training and becoming something I thought compared to him, and I was wrong. I was so damn wrong." He hung his head, allowing a single tear to fall at the memory of his disgraced brother before he looked up again.

"You on the other hand, you were nothing but great and right with whatever you did, never mind that you tried to talk to every single last one of all your opponents, it doesn't matter in the end because in the end you always won. Despite rushing off to a fight, you defeated Haku when he nearly killed me, you showed everyone how good you were in the Chunin Exams we went through together, and you beat Gaara after he had given into Shukaku…all of that after I had failed to do the same."

"Then you sought to involve yourself between me and Itachi. You thought you were saving me, right? You thought you were going to be the hero again, the one to beat the monster again but you didn't, did you? You finally understood a bit of what pride was, what it meant to be ready to die instead of face such dishonor. And then you got in my way again. You wanted to stop me from going to Orochimaru, you said you would break my arms and legs to drag me back but I had something stronger than your 'promise' that day, I had the honor of my clan on my shoulders, the weight of revenge. I beat you but it didn't stop you, I thought I had proved my dream, my promise, stronger than yours but I was wrong. It didn't matter to you, all that mattered was that you drag me back to the village."

"And you did in the end, you accomplished everything you wanted and you brought me back after I admitted I was a fool, after I had failed so much there was no point in doing anything but facing death with dishonor…but then you stepped in. You made sure I wouldn't die, you dragged Kakashi into it, and you even managed to drag the Kage forward to defend me. You were my best friend then, you were protecting someone broken but then…nothing changed."

The Uchiha's empty sleeve moved as he rose up what remained of his left arm, shaking it to show the fact the sleeve was empty to all those present.

"My greatest sin, my greatest regret, was what I had done with my left hand…how I tried to kill the one friend I thought I had. I took your right arm from you and I will forever regret that…what I did will haunt me forever but I'm not sorry for what I did today."

"Naruto…you're not the same one I knew, not the same one I saw as my better that day in what was left of the Valley of the End. You've become Hokage, you've married HInata, you've done so much but it's not you. It's someone with your face but not who you're supposed to be. You're still just a child."

Sasuke looked towards the blonde on the floor, pained blue eyes finally meeting cold black ones and a grimace not born from pain crossed his face as the Uchiha abruptly rose to his feet, the ANBU that had remained motionless in the shadows finally springing to life at his sudden movements.

He did nothing as they approached him. He left his life to fate it seemed.

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AN: Well...that happened. Hope it was enjoyable.


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